A 17th century German book on the art of writing. The full title (in English) reads The Proper Art of Writing: a compilation of all sorts of capital or initial letters of German, Latin and Italian fonts from different masters of the noble art of writing. A great range of different styles are represented seemingly increasing in elaborateness, and also illegibility, as the book goes on.

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Art, Design & Picturebooks

In this section of the site we bring you curated collections of images, books, audio and film, shining a light on curiosities and wonders from a wide range of online archives. With a leaning toward the surprising, the strange, and the beautiful, we hope to provide an ever-growing cabinet of curiosities for the digital age, a kind of hyperlinked Wunderkammer – an archive of materials which truly celebrates the breadth and variety of our shared cultural commons and the minds that have made it. Some of our most popular posts include visions of the future from late 19th century France, a dictionary of Victorian slang and a film showing the very talented “hand-farting” farmer of Michigan. With each post including links back to the original source we encourage you to explore these wonderful online sources for yourself. Check out our Sources page to see where we find the content.

This excellently sub-titled love emblem book is a reworking of emblems originally found in the earlier Thronus Cupidinis. Each of the forty-four cupid-centred emblems are accompanied on the facing page by a quatrain, written out in four languages: Latin, English, Spanish and French. …Continued

Poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley, introduction by Walter Raleigh, illustrated by Robert Anning Bell; 1902; George Bell and Sons, London.
A turn-of-the-century edition of Shelley’s …Continued

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Strong Freedom in the Zone.